Saturday, 7 July 2012

Indraprastha Gas (IGL) has raised prices of auto gas by Rs 2.90 per kg in Delhi and Rs 3.30 per kg in neighbouring areas because of rising input cost, rupee depreciation and recent hike in electricity rates.

The new price of compressed natural gas (CNG) is Rs 38.35 per kg in Delhi and Rs 43.10 per kg in Noida, Greater Noida and Ghaziabad from Saturday, a company spokesman said.

He said the price increase would have "minor" impact on the running cost of vehicles in Delhi. "For autos, the increase would be 8 paisa per km, for taxi it would be 14 paisa per km and in case of buses, the increase would be 83 paisa per km, which translates to less than two paisa per passenger-km," he said.

Reasons for raising CNG prices include increasing dependence on costly imported liquefied natural gas in the spot market due to shortage of cheaper natural gas produced domestically, he said. The company pays in dollars for importing LNG.

"In addition, there has been an increase in cost due to a massive hike of over 23% in electricity tariff and also in minimum wages announced by the government," he added.The rapidly increasing CNG demand has forced the company to increase imports of LNG. "The price of spot LNG is more than three times the price of domestic gas," he said. Gas produced from Reliance operated KG-D6 block is sold at $4.20/mmBtu.